For this week's article, I've decided to cover another one of my old competitive decks. Damia, Sage of Stone was, in its prime, one of the most salt-inducing decks I have ever built. Back when my local meta had competitive EDH tournaments, Damia was easily my favourite pile of cards to bring to the table. Unfortunately, some of the best cards in the deck have been banned, and some rules changed, so it's not identical to my original lists but I believe it would still be a load of fun.
The Game Plan
As evidenced in the title, Damia is a ramp deck. The reason for the excessive number of land searching spells (even higher than my Omnath deck!) is due to the way Damia works. I'd empty my hand as fast as possible in order to cast Damia on turn 2-4. On a good day, I'd cast Damia with either a land untapped with Swan Song in hand, or nothing untapped with either Force of Will. On my next turn, I'd casually fill my hand and almost certainly draw either more counters to prolong the game, or a combo of some sort.
The main combo is your typical Tooth and Nail into Palinchron and Deadeye Navigator, but I usually played it a bit differently. If I knew my opponent had no way to stop it, I'd search for Palinchron and Rune-Scarred Demon and use the demon to get Deadeye Navigator. Then with the infinite mana I'd proceed to draw my deck and do whatever I want. For those unfamiliar, Palinchron and Deadeye create infinite mana together, Palinchron untaps seven lands, you float five mana, and use the other two to blink Palinchron again. Palinchron then returns to the battlefield, and you repeat the process. Then you simply blink Deadeye Navigator and pair it to another creature with an enter-the-battlefield ability and use the ability over and over again.
Survivability
This deck is surprisingly more hardy than it looks on paper. I had a game once with an Oblivion Stone and Academy Ruins on the battlefield, and Bribery in my hand. I knew my opponent had Zealous Conscripts and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker in his hand. So I cast Bribery, and was lucky enough to discover that he ran Avacyn, Angel of Hope. So I put that into play, and sacrificed Oblivion Stone when he proceeded to combo. He didn't notice my Academy Ruins, so I was able to indefinitely destroy all of his nonland permanents while slowly killing him with his own Avacyn.
Resiliency is also the main reason I run counterspells. I would never counter something that wasn't immediately ending the game, or interrupting my combo. I had enough consistent ways to ensure that my opponent wasn't going to win to not be concerned with the resolution of a Necropotence or Jace, the Mind Sculptor.
The Deck List
I hope you all enjoy this week's deck that I pulled out of the vault. I've got a few more of these up my sleeve to be shared at some point. In the mean time I'll be continuing to come up with new stuff next week. Thanks for reading.
